Sun River Apartments

I'm venting on my blog so I can have witnesses and so others don't make the same mistake:

Do NOT move into Sun River apartments in South Salt Lake City. The management stinks at following through with pretty much anything. The worst offense: There have been cockroaches in our apartment since before we moved in. We have had multiple treatments (only after we begged/annoyed the crap out of the office folk) and they have done nothing except exacerbate the issue.


This past week alone I cannot walk into a room without seeing at least one cockroach. Today, I saw at least three every time I changed rooms. I've been using Clorox, Lysol and Windex sprays (basically, whatever's closer) to try to kill them because I just can't handle it anymore. They're showing up quickly enough that if we leave dinner out while eating dinner, they crawl into the food.


Unfortunately, we signed a twelve month lease and would have to pay fees for us to leave this horrid, horrid place before the contract is up.


Being a grown up sucks. End of rant. :D

This is how many cockroaches I caught in a fourteen hour period. Not pictured: 6 that were drowned and 10 that were so small I couldn't pick them up with a piece of paper to put in the container.

Hate Notes

After receiving this note on my car (and I wanted to include a picture of the note so you could see exactly how things were worded; that there was, in fact, no signature; and so you could read the emphasis for yourself), I am going to include all of my rough drafts for a reply here.

Dear Anonymous,
I'm sorry that your son/daughter doesn't love you enough to give you their own assigned spot when you visit like we do for ours.
Regretfully,
Natalia

Dear Anonymous,
I'd love to discuss the reasons I use a spot in my own parking lot over some hot chocolate or dinner. Sadly, you left no name or contact information. I choose to eat Doritos casserole tonight in honor of your note and hereby revoke my invitation so there is more for me.
Sincerely,
Natalia

Dear Anonymous family member,
If you would take the time to notice, there are four visitor spots in our entire parking lot, which accommodates 44 apartments. I noticed you didn't leave notes wrapped in Ziplock bags on anyone else's car. Thanks for singling me out.
Gratefully,
Nataia

Dear writer of anonymous notes,
It's spelled "Wymount" and "frustrated," and you capitalized your V in "visit." And those are just the things that are incorrectly written, not everything that is incorrect.
Grammatically yours,
Natalia

Dear person who I'm starting to feel sorry for,
Your note backfired. My husband and I have discussed the issue and we are never, EVER moving my car again.
Sucks to be you,
Natalia

Dear lady,
I will make some assumptions to return the favor you made for me. First, I'm assuming that you're actually a parent of someone here in Wymount. That would put you in the middle-aged range. This also almost assuredly means that all of your children are past car seat age. I park in spots close to my home because I have a ten month old daughter who cannot yet walk and has to be transported in a car seat. This means I am always carrying AT LEAST 30 lbs worth of cargo (this is not an exaggeration; I weighed both). When I go grocery shopping or do laundry, it is both inconvenient and difficult to park in an unlabeled spot (which you are also welcome to use) that is almost two-tenths of a mile away. And I don't mean inconvenient in an I-don't-want-to-carry-something-further way, I mean it in an I-have-to-carry-my-child-with-me-at-all-times way.
Use your own extra walking time to learn how to whistle,
Natalia

Dear anonymously jerky,
I don't like parking in my assigned parking spot. My spot is located next to two foreign families who have both told me that they don't drive or park well (and while I love them and they're sweet, good people, they're also being totally honest about this). Every time I travel, I travel with a ten month old in a car seat, which means I have to insert and remove a car seat every time I use my car. This is made very difficult if the car next to me is parked closer than two feet away from the door. The visitor spot in question is on the end of a row, which means that, if I back in, I have all the space in the world to put my child into the car safely and remove her from it. I'm sure that you, a concerned family member, would understand this.
Spacially,
Natalia

Dear secret sister of time,
Wow, we must have the exact same schedule of needing to be in Wymount if it's only ever my car in that spot. I can assure you that I only park my car in that slot about 40 - 50% of the time. And, oddly enough, my car is not "always" there. In fact, I was going to use it today but didn't (see note #5) but that is also not the first time I would have used it this week. I was gone for two hours on Tuesday and an hour on Monday. In fact, my car wasn't there for most of last week; I was only able to park in the visitor spot close to my apartment just before the weekend.
Better luck next time,
Natalia

Dear non-resident,
When I signed up to live at Wymount, I specifically asked the management where I was supposed to park my car because my family is lucky enough to own two. They told me to use the visitor spots.
Take that,
Natalia

Random Rants, driving

In a two week period, I was almost hit three times. All three of those incidents took place on campus property. Two of them at the same intersection. I actually stopped driving for a few days because I couldn't handle the stress and anxiety I felt after the third (really close) incident.

Today, while pulling into the Maceys in Provo, I almost T-boned a senior citizen because she completely ignored the stop sign. The white line on the road that says "stop." The giant red sign that says "stop." The fact that it's a four-way intersection and her direction of traffic has stop signs while mine did not.

I don't know how much more of this anxiety I can handle. I'm already on pins and needles when I travel because I have a baby in the car. I'm not sure how to make sure I can keep her safe when I have no control over what others do on the road.

Things that annoy the heck out of me:
*When I'm already going 5 mph over the speed limit (the most I'll push it) and the car behind me is so close I can barely see the bottom of their windshield in my rearview mirror.
*Cars that change lanes in the middle of an intersection. (Which is illegal in MO (where I took driver's ed.), but apparently is not here in UT. I know. I've called the DMV. It's "frowned upon" but not actually against the law. Although if a policeman is feeling particularly sassy that day, he can pull you over for "reckless driving.")
*Cars that don't stop at stop signs
*Cars that decide that their time is more valuable than everyone else that's going in the opposite direction by turning left even though they weren't even close to the intersection by the time the light turned red.
*Folks that drive cars that are bigger than they can handle. For example, the truck that's not between the parking spot lines or the car that constantly drives in two lanes of traffic.

New Neighbors (and a rant)

We have new neighbors.

Not that we were that attached to the old ones (we saw them in person, what, like, eight times?) but at least they were considerate!

Our new neighbors moved in at some point this weekend (we don't know, we were out of town) and have been kind enough to let us know that they wake up before 6 a.m. How do we know that? Because they wake US up before 6 a.m. And I don't mean five minutes beforehand. I mean 5:10 in the morning.

That's right, kids, 5:10.

Call me old fashioned, but I've always been taught that there's a sacred bubble between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8/9 a.m. You are quiet. You don't do things like vacuum when there are neighbors downstairs or throw a dance party with open doors in the middle of a complex. And you don't freakin' yell at whoever else is in the house and have loud, personal conversations at who knows what noise levels at 5:30 in the morning. Or, for that matter, have a soccer tournament(?) before 8 in the morning. (That's my best guess--there was a lot of laughing, muffled noises, and a big WHOMP against the wall that's right next to my head when I'm still in bed trying to sleep.

Rant over. I just really wanted to vent. And have it down in writing should I need to get more proactive (seeing as it's only been two and a half days . . . )

Side note: is it evil that I keep thinking, I'll have a newborn in about three weeks and she'll keep whatever schedule/volume she wants and won't that teach them?

Dear life

Dear today,

You are like yesterday for Bill Murray. There is no way that the hot water AND the electricity should go out in the same 24 hour period. Unless, you know, there's a blizzard. Which there isn't right now. I'm just saying . . .

Love,
Natalia

A Little Princess

I am not a very nice person when I'm stressed/tired/hungry. And you can take those dashes to mean "or" or "and." Whichever.

When everything falls apart, it all gets better

Yesterday was one of those trivial roller-coaster days. I mean, I had most of the day off (good) and Rock Band Track Pack no. 1 was finally released (good) and I spent a lot of time with Kristen (always really good) and smear some windows (always really fun). However, I also got a call saying "my car is broken, we're going to need to figure out another way up to SLC for the Batman movie (not good). Then I got to play Rock Band (fabulously good) and watch SYTYCD (also nice) but never got back in touch with my ride (bad) who also happened to have my ticket for the show (especially bad because it meant that it didn't matter if I found another ride, I didn't have a way into the theater). During all this, the guy I'm supposed to go out with on Saturday (no good or bad assessment yet) accused me of lying because I had told him I couldn't play a game because I was leaving to see a movie (bad--especially for him because you don't go around *saying* that to people you barely know).

I went to bed not knowing what happens in the new Batman movie.

This morning the guy made up for himself by offering to take me to Dark Knight on Saturday instead of what our original plans were because I finally got it through his thick skull that calling me a liar wasn't the way to win my heart. Dork. (Oh, yeah, that would be a good thing). Then my friend told me she had bought me tickets to see Mamma Mia! tonight and insisted I not reimburse her. Which was very sweet of her.

Moral of the story: 1) don't call girls you're taking out liars and 2) even if you think life sucks, it doesn't. Nice stuff will happen, if you're patient.